Forget sales targets, set rejection targets instead

If you're struggling to generate money, start here.

X marks the spot.

I’ve experienced a lot of rejection over the course of my career.

Early on I spent a year in agency recruitment having the phone slammed down in my ear ten times a day and even once, hearing an old guy scream “f*ck off, you b*tch” down the line. I’ve run B2B sales for tech startups, sold sponsorships for my podcast and spent the last five years selling myself, my skills and my ideas. 

Now I’m in my mid thirties I have many notches on my sales belt, but back in my late twenties when I quit my job to build a business I had no clue what I was doing. On day one as a founder I decided that the first order business was to set a monthly sales target and each morning, I’d armour up like a warrior going into business battle committed to achieving my mission.

The sales target was a distraction though and I weirdly used it to shield myself from rejection by telling myself I only needed to send a few emails a week. Whenever someone declined to jump on a call I felt a wave of guilty relief, and my mind squirmed with complex stories about not being good enough, smart enough, savvy enough, experienced enough or resilient enough. Every unanswered email and hollow beep of an empty dial tone made me question the life decisions I’d made.

I quickly realised that having a sales target and constantly falling short did nothing for my confidence, so one day I made a decision to change up my strategy. Instead of focusing on an elusive financial goal, I set myself a goal to hear a hundred no’s. I started walking into meetings expecting rejection, and viewing them not as a personal attack but a data point that informed a necessary change in my direction. I got curious and started noticing patterns around my communication and how it landed with people. Gaps and opportunities emerged and I uncovered the intersection between the market needs and my experience. My skin grew thicker than ever before, and over time I reached a tipping point where the skills and confidence I’d built through countless rejections, outpaced the rejections I was facing.

Ironically, a rejection target generated more income than a sales target ever did:

• The more times I got rejected, the more I learned

• The more I learned, the more my confidence grew

• The more my confidence grew, the less I got rejected

• The less I got rejected, the more sales I made

The rejection tipping point.

It’s tempting to make ‘making money’ your Roman Empire when you’re starting out in business, because revenue seems like the right metric to measure your success. But it’s not.

What’s important isn’t some number you’ve plucked out of the air and placed in a fancy spreadsheet, it’s putting yourself out there and waking up each day with a plan to disturb the peace. It’s about racing towards the tipping point - the centre of the X – and collecting skills as fast as you possibly can.

As a self employed human the only way to survive is by generating income, and generating income is a byproduct of facing rejection head on. There’s only one pathway to your destination and it’s by failing fast, raising hell, armouring up and stepping into the arena. It’s via the tipping point.

X marks the spot.

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🎙️How I’ve applied the rejection target to sales gigs and my own business:

• The value of working in direct sales [0:39]

• It’s all about inputs, not outputs [2:48]

• How I sold a tech product to multiple e-comm brands before it was even built [4:10]

• How many sales interactions it usually takes me to reach the tipping point [7:41]

• It’s all a volume game [8:40]

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🙏🏽 Would you please do me a favour?

I’m obsessed with understanding the changing landscape of work and curious as to why so many people are desperate to jump off the corporate ladder and create a different type of life for themselves.

I've kicked off a piece of research to understand some of the biggest obstacles and opportunities that people who are building (or wanting to build) a portfolio career face. My goal is to hopefully identify some common pain points and opportunities, and create something that sets people who want to pursue this unconventional career path up to succeed.

I’d massively appreciate you taking this 3 minute survey if this feels relevant to you. Thanks!

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